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obloquy. These honours were reserved for maturer labours. The characteristic lines,

"Glory and loveliness have passed away, &c.,"

were written in the midst of a merry circle of friends, who happened to be present when the printer sent to say that if there was to be a dedication he must send it directly; and he did so,-for the main thought, the regeneration of the images of Pagan beauty, was ever present with him. His health at this time was far from good, and in the spring of 1817, he returned to the quiet of the Isle of Wight to write "Endymion," a subject long germinating in his fancy, and thus shadowed out in the first poem of his early volume:

"He was a poet, sure a lover too,

Who stood on Latmus' top, what time there blew
Soft breezes from the myrtle vale below;
And brought, in faintness solemn, sweet, and slow,
A hymn from Dian's temple; while upswelling,
The incense rose to her own starry dwelling.
But tho' her face was clear as infants' eyes,
Tho' she stood smiling o'er the sacrifice,
The poet wept at her so piteous fate,
Wept that such beauty should be desolate :
So in fine wrath some golden sounds he won,
And gave meek Cynthia her Endymion."

The solitude was not very propitious to his work, but he composed some other good verses, such as the sonnet "On the Sea," and others illustrative of his thoughts and feelings at the time. In a letter to Haydon he thus expressed himself with a noble humility: "I must think that difficulties nerve the

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spirit of a man; they make our prime objects a refuge as well as a passion; the trumpet of Fame is as a tower of strength, the ambitious bloweth it, and is safe." "There is no greater sin, after the seven deadly, than to flatter oneself into the idea of being a great poet, or one of those beings who are privileged to wear out their lives in the pursuit of honour. How comfortable a thing it is to feel that such a crime must bring its heavy penalty, that if one be a self-deluder, accounts must be balanced." Again to Hunt: "I have asked myself so often why I should be a Poet more than other men, seeing how great a thing it is, how great things are to be gained by it, that at last the idea has grown so monstrously beyond my seeming power of attainment, that the other day I nearly consented with myself to drop into a Phaethon. Yet 'tis a disgrace to fail even in a huge attempt, and at this moment I drive the thought from me. I began my poem about a fortnight since, and have done some every day, except travelling ones."

In September he visited his friend Bailey, at Oxford, and wrote thence as follows :-"Believe me, my dear it is a great happiness to me that you are, in this finest part of the year, winning a little enjoyment from the hard world. In truth, the great Elements we know of, are no mean comforters: the open sky sits upon our senses like a sapphire-crown; the air is our robe of state; the earth is our throne; and the sea a mighty minstrel playing before it—able, like David's harp, to make such a one as you forget almost the tempest-cares of life.

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I shall ever feel grateful to you for having made known to me so real a fellow as Bailey. He delights me in the selfish, and, please God, the disinterested part of my disposition. If the old Poets have any pleasure in looking down at the enjoyers of their works, their eyes must bend with double satisfaction upon him. I sit as at a feast when he is over them, and pray that if, after my death, any of my labours should be worth saving, they may have as 'honest a chronicler' as Bailey. Out of this, his enthusiasm in his own pursuit and for all good things is of au exalted kind, worthy a more healthful frame and an untorn spirit. He must have happy years to come; 'he shall not die-by God.""*

Some later extracts from letters to this excellent friend are interesting; they were part of the occupation of the winter of 1817-18, which Keats passed at Hampstead among his friends, perhaps the happiest period of his life.—“I have heard Hunt say, 'Why endeavour after a long poem?' to which I should answer, 'Do not the lovers of poetry like to have a little region to wander in, where they may pick and choose, and in which the images are so numerous that many are forgotten and found new in a second reading, which may be food for a week's stroll in the Besides, a long poem is a test of Invention, which I take to be the polar-star of

summer.

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*In p. 62 of the "Life and Letters of Keats," the biographer spoke of the decease of Mr. Bailey: he had been erroneously informed as to that event, but he regrets to add that the newspapers, within the last few weeks, record the death of Archdeacou Bailey, lately returned from Ceylon, where he had long resided.

poetry, as Fancy is the sails, and Imagination the rudder. Did our great Poets ever write short pieces? I mean, in the shape of tales. This same Invention seems indeed of late years to have been forgotten as a poetical excellence.' But enough of this, I put on no laurels till I shall have finished Endymion."

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"One thing has pressed upon me lately and increased my humility and capability of submission, and that is this truth: meu of genius are great as certain ethereal chemicals operating on the mass of neutral intellect, but they have not any individuality, any determined character. I would call the top and head of those who have a proper self, Men of Power." * "I wish I was as certain of the end of all your troubles as that of your momentary start about the authenticity of the Imagination. I am certain of nothing but of the holiness of the heart's affections, and the truth of Imagination. What the Imagination seizes as Beauty must be Truth, whether it existed before or not;-for I have the same idea of all our passions as of Love; they are all, in their sublime, creative of essential Beauty. The Imagination may be compared to Adam's dream: he awoke and found it Truth. I am more zealous in this affair, because I have never yet been able to perceive how anything can be known for Truth by consecutive reasoning, and yet it must be so. Can it be that even the greatest philosopher ever arrived at his goal without putting aside numerous objections? However it may be, O for a life of sensations rather than of thoughts! It is 'a vision in the form of youth,'—-a shadow of reality to come,-and this consideration

has further convinced me,-for it has come as auxiliary to another speculation of mine,-that we shall enjoy ourselves hereafter by having what we call happiness on earth repeated in a finer tone. And yet such a fate can only befall those who delight in Sensation, rather than hunger, as you do, after Truth. Adam's dream will do here, and seems to be a conviction that Imagination and its empyreal reflection is the same as human life and its spiritual repetition. But, as I was saying, the simple imaginative mind may have its rewards in the repetition of its own silent working coming continually on the spirit with a fine suddenness. To compare great things with small, have you never, by being surprised with an old melody, in a delicious place, by a delicious voice, felt over again your very speculations and surmises at the time it first operated on your soul? Do you not remember forming to yourself the singer's face-more beautiful than it was possible, and yet, with the elevation of the moment, you did not think so? Even then you were mounted on the wings of Imagination, so high that the prototype must be hereafter that delicious face you will see.--Sure this cannot be exactly the case with a complex mind-one that is imaginative and, at the same time, careful of its fruits,-who would exist partly on sensation, partly on thought,-to whom it is necessary that 'years should bring the philosophic mind?' Such an one I consider yours, and therefore it is necessary to your eternal happiness that you not only drink this old wine of Heaven, which I shall call the redigestion of our most ethereal musings on

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